Paul Kagame in the context of "Juvénal Habyarimana"

The Rwandan Civil War was a large-scale civil war in Rwanda which was fought between the Rwandan Armed Forces, representing the country's government, and the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) from 1 October 1990 to 18 July 1994. The war arose from the long-running dispute between the Hutu and Tutsi groups within the Rwandan population. The Rwandan Revolution, which broke out in 1959, had replaced the Tutsi monarchy with a Hutu-led republic, forcing more than 336,000 Tutsis to seek refuge in neighbouring countries. A group of these refugees in Uganda founded the RPF which, under the leadership of Fred Rwigyema and Paul Kagame, became a battle-ready army by the late 1980s.

The war began on 1 October 1990, when the RPF invaded north-eastern Rwanda, advancing 60 km (37 mi) into the country. They suffered a major setback when Rwigyema was killed in action on the second day. The Rwandan Army, assisted by expeditionary troops from France, gained the upper hand and the RPF were largely defeated by the end of October. Kagame, who had been in the United States during the invasion, returned to take command. He withdrew troops to the Virunga Mountains for several months before attacking again. The RPF began an insurgency, which continued until mid-1992 with neither side able to gain the upper hand. A series of protests forced Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana to begin peace negotiations with the RPF and domestic opposition parties. Despite disruption and killings by Hutu Power, a group of extremists opposed to any deal, and a fresh RPF offensive in early 1993, the negotiations were successfully concluded with the signing of the Arusha Accords in August 1993.

The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF–Inkotanyi; French: Front patriotique rwandais, FPR) is the ruling political party in Rwanda.

The RPF was founded in December 1987 by Rwandan Tutsi exiled in Uganda because of the ethnic violence that had occurred during the Rwandan Hutu Revolution in 1959–1962. In 1990, the RPF started the Rwandan Civil War in an attempt to overthrow the Hutu-dominated Habyarimana government. Later the Rwandan genocide occurred, and ended on 4 July with the RPF conquest of the entire country. The RPF have ruled the country since then as a de facto one-party state. RPF leader Paul Kagame has been president of Rwanda since his election in 2000.

The Great Lakes refugee crisis is the common name for the situation beginning with the exodus in April 1994 of over two million Rwandans to neighboring countries of the Great Lakes region of Africa in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. Many of the refugees were Hutu fleeing the predominantly Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which had gained control of the country at the end of the genocide. However, the humanitarian relief effort was vastly compromised by the presence among the refugees of many of the Interahamwe and government officials who carried out the genocide, who used the refugee camps as bases to launch attacks against the new government led by Paul Kagame. The camps in Zaire became particularly politicized and militarized. The knowledge that humanitarian aid was being diverted to further the aims of the genocidaires led many humanitarian organizations to withdraw their assistance. The conflict escalated until the start of the First Congo War in 1996, when RPF-supported rebels invaded Zaire and sought to repatriate the refugees. The conflict escalated again with the start of the Second Congo War, also called Africa's World War or the Great War of Africa, that began in 1998 when the Congolese president Laurent-Désiré Kabila turned against his former allies from Rwanda and Uganda. The conflict continues with the Kivu conflict that started in 2004 with the start of the M23 rebellion that started in 2012.